by Gina Mayfield

Recently we celebrated my daughter’s second birthday party. As a lot of moms do I began scouring the internet at party planning blogs and Pinterest to get ideas on what kind of theme to do. After a lot of searching I settled on a milk and cookies theme – cute and simple…or so I thought. I mean, how hard can it be to bake cookies and buy milk – right? With the help of ladies from work I gathered my cute containers (similar to the ones I had seen on Pinterest) and set out to plan my menu for the perfect milk and cookies party! I settled on eight different types of cookies, three types of milk, Oreo ice cream dessert and a birthday cake. Easy peasy…or so I thought.

As I was settling into the cookie baking I decided to start with chocolate chip cookies. I set out with my Nestle Toll House Cookie recipe and my mixer and went to baking. When I pulled them out of the oven – it was a giant cookie mess! They were not cookies, they were more of a cookie sheet as they had all combined together. I tried again and sat by the oven to watch – same result, tried again, same. I thought maybe it was the recipe so I decided to try another chocolate chip cookie recipe and that didn’t work either. At that point, I was losing it! It was over – I was not going to be able to pull this party off. I might as well go and purchase cookie dough. I threw those in the garbage and started on my other cookies and thankfully they all turned out well….and my chocolate chip cookies were made from cookie dough.

As I was having my cookie debacle the Lord began to speak to me, ” Gina – you have let impressing others with your cute party make you lose sight of everything. Lose sight of honoring and celebrating your little girl, lose sight of having people in your home and entertaining them and lose sight of Me. I have called you to love Me and love others not impress others with your parties”.

I know I am not the only one has let social media make you a crazy mess! But, why do we do it? Why do we make ourselves crazy in order to impress others? Why do we let comparison creep up on us? Why do we put unrealistic expectations on ourselves? 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. We need to be authentic with each other and stop the ugly comparison game. Some people can pull off gourmet meals and smock beautiful dresses and that is ok if I cannot do that. Instead of slamming myself for not being able to do that I can thank God for the gifts He has blessed those ladies with and thank Him for the gifts He has given me. My focus should be serving my family and friends but most of all be transformed into His image.

I’m learning that it’s often the little things that speak love to my friends and family most. It’s abandoning the dishes to play with my little girl. It’s making myself stay up late and watch that football game with my husband. It’s an impromptu visit to the park with friends. It’s being available.

While I’ll still try to make things pretty and creative, it’s not going to be my focus. My goal every day should be to show love to my friends and family instead of planning that Pinterest spectacular birthday party. When I am faced with the temptation to compare myself to the glories of others, I’m going to contemplate on the glory of God instead.